Stolen
by merciki
Summary: Peeta comes back to D12. But there's something missing. Something that was taken from him. Written for the d12drabbles on tumblr : Prompt: Stolen.


Peeta returned to District 12 on a beautiful spring day. The birds had began their melodies in the trees, and one family had decided to nest somewhere in the roof of my house. It didn't disturb me at all, reminding me of the dozens that once inhabited our tiny Seam house, another life ago, or was it only three years? I couldn't tell. Time was nothing but a concept, passing haphazardly, bringing me only remorse, regrets, angst, or memories of fire. How ironic - the Girl on Fire saw her closest friends die to the flames, almost dying herself in the process.

Peeta came back as broken mentally as I was physically. I was familiar with not sleeping at night, plagued by nightmares, visions of deaths, mutts, Snow's sarcastic laugh - the latest, an every night companion. I wasn't familiar with the sounds that escaped his windows, tearing my sleepless nights with cries and pain.

Oh, sure, during the days he was fine, baking bread for the construction teams, for Haymitch and for me, but I can tell even the cheese buns aren't the ones he made an eternity ago with his dad. They are good, of course, but miss a touch that made them unforgettable. His eyes lack the spark that made Peeta who he was - too good for this world, too sunny for this dark district, too loving for a lost soul like me.

When I started looking closer, I saw it wasn't only his eyes that were empty, but the rest of him. He barely touched anyone, a real smile couldn't reach his mouth. Of course, he was still the Peeta everybody remembered, kind and gentle, but he wasn't my Peeta. The one who gave me the pearl, the one who held me at night, the one who painted sunsets and wars to get them out of his head, the one who saved me over and over again.

Maybe it was time for me to save him.

Maybe I could bring back what had been stolen from him, what made him Peeta Mellark.

And then, maybe, I could start repaying him the huge debts I owed.

I've always been an action kind of girl. I've never been one for talks and batting eyes. So I did what I always did best, I acted.

It started with screams, really. One night, a few days after the Summer Festival, his screams were so loud they woke me up from my own terrors. I was sweating, panting, the bedsheets around me like the ropes that were holding me prisoner in my own nightmares, when I heard him scream - a heartbreaking, desperate sound, tearing me apart. The sound of a dying man.

I did not think. I did not stop to wonder what my action meant, would mean, could mean. I didn't have time. I knew that somehow, to keep my balance, I needed Peeta safe and sound in my life.

I needed to check on him.

I crossed the road between our houses, not looking at the night enveloping me - I couldn't care less if stars were high above, or if there was a little breeze to caress my hair. All I cared about were the screams escaping the slightly ajar windows facing mine.

I reached his door, tired from the small run, tired from the dead I carried with me, always.

The door was locked, the screams continued, echoing in my head.

I did what I always have done when faced with a problem.

I climbed along the gutter. It was easier than the trees in the forests, the walls giving me easy access to his windows.

Once I was inside, I took a look around, noticing how similar to mine Peeta's room was. A big bed, two bedside tables, the Capitol furniture sparse in the too big place, too heavy with memories.

The screams started again, barely a whisper of pain at first, coming from the mass on the bed, rigid, tense, nothing like the calm, charming and kind boy Peeta used to be. I could still remember him, charming our teacher when he had forgotten to do an assignment, or helping an old woman in the street - that's who Peeta had been before all these Games, this war, his torture. That's the Peeta I wanted to find again, that I wanted to bring back to the world.

Once again, instead of thinking about the consequences my act could have, I followed my instincts. How many nights had he helped me go through my nightmares? How many times had he woken up to soothe my soul, to ease the pain?

So I did the only thing I could think of. I stepped from the windowsill, silently walking towards the wailing bed, before slipping under his orange and green quilt. Lacing one arm around him, the other started petting his hair - just like I used to do with Prim when she was younger.

I couldn't tell how long I stood there, whispering sweet nothings into his ear, using my hands to calm him, to avoid the screams, the hurt, until he slept.

I fell asleep some time after too.

I woke up to the sounds of the birds, almost familiar, but too far away that morning.

Dawn hadn't even started to come, its fingers only painting the sky a lighter shade of blue, when I rose from the place that I had claimed during the night. Sleep had always been easier in Peeta's arms, my head on his chest, his arms around me, protecting me from the nightmares and the world around us. Protecting us, maybe.

I didn't have time to muse or contemplate such questions. I needed to get out, to leave the sanctuary of these arms before Peeta woke, before reality would come back to break this moment of peace.

I couldn't stay in this house - it wasn't my place. The locked door was proof of that.

As quietly as possible, I escaped the safe haven of Peeta's arms, the warmth of his bed, the smell of his house to go back inside my cold, dark, empty bed, wondering how another pair of arms could keep the bad dreams at bay.

Wondering how I could have slept before without them to hold me.

I never told him I had come to his bed on this night.

I never told him I came to his bed every night I dared to after that.

With time, things started to change, though.

I started spending more time in Victor's Village rather than in the woods. I stopped craving a solitude that only reminded me of the ones I had lost, opting for more contact with the people in town.

Helping creating something helped too. There were tons of debris to take care of, tons of stones and pavements to move around, tons of people to bury.

With each stone moved aside, I felt a part of my debt to society being paid.

It took hours on the phone with Dr. Aurelius for me to realize this war had never been my fault. I was just used - the both of us had been used as sparks to ignite the rebellion. If not us, anyone else winning from another District, other than the Careers, would have done it.

Peeta and I were only names.

With time, and the nights I spent in his bed, Peea seemed to regain a bit of his old self. I saw him patting a kid's head one morning, looking at his hand after, as if he had been surprised by the gesture. I can't explain what I felt as I looked at Peeta watching the child run to his mother, his eyes going from the kid to his hand and back, as if something magic had happened, as if the mere contact of someone else could do him good.

The smile that graced my boy with the bread's face afterwards was more radiant than the sun.

With more time, we started to grow closer. He told me one morning at breakfast, which we had began sharing around the Giving Fest, that he wanted to plant a garden when spring came, to depend less and less on the supplies of the Capitol.

But Peeta being Peeta, his garden was soon too big for him to tend to, full of vegetables and fruit trees, but also of weeds and insects. So I started helping him, at first while he was in town, then after being caught, with him.

I still shared his bed a few nights a week, still climbing up that gutter, squeezing in through the slightly ajar window until I reached the cocoon of his arms.

I never thought sleeping with someone could bring so much comfort. During the nights with Peeta, I could be me, Katniss Everdeen, not the Mockingjay or the Girl on Fire, not the Tribute from District 12, or the other part of the Star-Crossed Lovers.

Me. Katniss. The scarred girl who had lost her father to the mines, her sister to the war, her mother to the love she lost.

Me. The hunter, the sharp archeress, who was afraid of the nights on my own, who was afraid to let her heart love again.

Me. The lover, so sad from her losses, not daring to hope for more, not daring to hope that the love that used to be mine could ever come back.

In his arms, I could cry.

So I did.

Over time, the garden grew up until there wasn't anything to do with it for a long period, besides wait for the vegetables to mature.

But I didn't want to lose Peeta's presence near me. The spark had started coming back to his eyes, he was laughing more with each passing day, going back to the sunshine he used to be when we were younger.

Peeta was healing, I was healing with him, through him. But we were losing things as time flew by.

One day he came to my house with a pumpkin pie, urging to come inside, begging me to taste it, nervousness written all over his face as he paced the kitchen, raking his hand through his hair.

When I told him it was good, that the crust was crispy enough and the pumpkin (homegrown) was perfect, he came to me, engulfing me in a hug that brought me to tears, as the memories of my nights with him came back to me with a vengeance. Memories I couldn't share with him, as I wasn't strong enough to admit I needed them as much as he needed me, that I could only have a peaceful night in his arms.

But I needed more than his arms, I realized suddenly.

I needed his breath in my neck, his words in my ear, his hand in mine, his presence by my side, his laugh to brighten my days, his kisses in my hair.

I needed him, all of him, around me, with me… in me.

The idea came suddenly - we needed to make new memories. Happier ones, one step at a time.

So I started a book.

At first, it was to write down the recipes Peeta remembered from the bakery, starting with the pumpkin pie, the nut and apple bread, the cheese buns, until more and more of them came back to his mind.

With each new recipe, he gained back a bit of his past.

Each new bread, each new cake brought back memories that set him more free every day. Remembering Alec and Tom's jokes, his dad's pet peeves, even his mother's best behavior, or Delly's incessant chat, made his blue eyes sparkle a bit more.

Still, his blue eyes weren't the same ones I grew fond of yet.

Of course we had bad days. Days when the bad things in our life took over the good, where fire and mutts were too strong for our still fragile brains. Days he spent in his house, fighting the ghosts in his head while I remained in mine, waiting for the horrors to leave, hoping he would be strong enough to come back to his life here, to come back to me. Days leading to nights I didn't dare climbing into his room, in fear I would break down, that I would reveal my presence to him.

I never feared him hurting me. He wouldn't, of that I was sure.

Of course I had bad days, days when the pain was too strong to drag me out of my head. Days when the tears were too many to be kept at bay, inside of me, days when the light was too bright or the nights too heavy.

Still, in the morning after, he was always there.

Like I was for him.

It took me months to find out the piece that was missing inside of him, the piece that had been stolen by the Capitol, the thing that made him Peeta. My Peeta. Not the other part of the Star-Crossed lovers, or the Baker Boy, or even the mutt, the soldier in the Star Squad.

I found out on a lovely winter day, when he was copying down a recipe of a cake they used to make for the end of the year - some kind of look-alike log I saw sometimes in the large windows of the bakery that had Prim and me drooling over them.

Peeta was explaining how he had to roll the dough with the filling to make it look like a log, finally taking his pen to draw the cake on the paper.

Drawing.

Peeta was the strongest person I've known in my entire life, in so many aspects. Physically, of course, his hard work at his parents' bakery, the training during his wrestling years and for the Games made him sturdy, but what called for respect was how hard he fought to get rid of the torture that was inflicted on him by Snow and, to some extent, Coin. How he struggled every day at the beginning of his treatment to sort out the things that belonged to his past, to get rid of the false memories. How hard he tried, and kept trying, for himself, for the others, maybe for me.

Despite his strength, I knew Peeta had always needed something to take his mind away from the real world, from the pain that was inflicted on him from a very young age, from everything that went wrong in his life.

He needed art.

That day, as he sat on my couch, doodling the cake he remembered from before, I jumped out of the room, and without thinking, went to the only place I knew I could find colored pencils.

Of course, he was right behind me, his loud tread running up the steps, and I heard, oh did I hear, his intake of breath as I entered the only place I had never walked in since returning from the Capitol.

Prim's room.

The only room that was forbidden in my house.

But Peeta needed these colored pencils more than I needed a sanctuary.

Maybe time had done its work, because it didn't hurt as much as I thought it would.

Prim was gone forever.

But my life was going on.

Our lives were.

So I grabbed the jar full of pencils, leaving my sister's room as I handed them to Peeta.

"We need to write about them to not forget them. Your family. Mine. Finnick. Rue. All of them. Can you help? Can you draw them?"

He could take the jar and start drawing again, to regain what he had abandoned in a cell of the Capitol, or not take it. It was entirely up to him.

He slowly extended his hand to grab the jar, before taking his hand back and raking it through his hair.

I felt the disappointment running through my veins, my limbs and sinews.

He looked at me, his eyes bluer than a cloudless sky, sparkling with bits of gold, his eyes so clear and smiling I could feel the tears pricking for relief. My Peeta was back.

"I'll draw them. Only if you allow me to draw you when you sleep in my bed."

* * *

My huge thanks to the wonderful dandelion-sunset for her beta skills 3

I'm thegirlfromoverthepond on tumblr :)

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